One of the appeals of TV is that it's not demanding. You can tune in and zone out. It's the opiate of the people.

Maybe that's why I like my TV chunky. Give me something to chew on once in awhile, a show with layers.

But there's a fine line between being complex and being cryptic. And ABC's FlashForward is walking it.

Yeah, the concept, adapted from Robert J. Sawyer's sci-fi novel, is cool: all mankind blacks out for 2 minutes and 17 seconds, sees what will happen a few months in the future, then wakes up.

I began to lose faith about 10 minutes into the pilot when Joseph Fiennes's FBI agent, wandering through the crash-and-burn post-incident chaos of downtown Los Angeles, stares in wonder as a kangaroo comes bouncing down the street toward him.

A telling detail? Or a red herring? With each week, the show smells more and more fishy.

Can kabbalah explain what happened? Does the secret lie in numerology? Dead-crow syndrome? Is the answer to be found in Somalia? Or in a greasy spoon out in the California desert?

Incinerated subplots are piling up on the side of the highway, but the road goes nowhere. This is the show that cried, "Clue!"

As the implausibilities mount and the mystery grows murkier, it's becoming obvious that this series is more Millennium than X-Files, more Heroes than Lost.

I've had my own vision of the future: I'm watching TV and FlashForward is nowhere to be found.

Best seat in the house. Weirdest thing about the baseball playoffs so far has been the eerie appearance of Pat Sajak.

At two of the Los Angeles Angels home games in the ALCS on Fox, the Wheel of Fortune host was a fixture right behind home plate in a recessed, dugoutlike VIP section.

With his big head, Sajak loomed over the catchers' shoulders all game like a j_ck-o-l_nt_rn. I kept expecting Vanna to start flipping the numbers on the scoreboard.

I'd like to buy an RBI, Pat?

Backstabbers. Cold Case is known for creating episodes with themed sound tracks ('50s crooners, British New Wave, Big Band, all Tim McGraw, etc.).

With an episode titled "Soul," the police procedural set in the City of Brotherly Love uses the lush R&B music defined as the Sound of Philadelphia.

About time. Actually, it's a little past time. "Soul" was supposed to run last Sunday but got preempted by a football overrun.

So this weekend, you'll be able to hear snatches of great Philly singers such as Billy Paul and Harold Melvin.

But jarringly, the artists most represented in the episode are the Temptations, with a pair of recordings composed by Motown's house songwriters, Barrett Strong and Norman Whitfield.

To borrow a phrase from one of those songs, "Papa Was a Rolling Stone": That ain't right.

Which borough you from? This season's Desperate Housewives has another disappointing story line about new neighbors on Wisteria Lane with a shady past. In this case, the Bolens.

The funny part is hearing Jeffrey Nordling (FBI commander Larry Moss on 24) trying to outdo Drea de Matteo, his TV spouse, with a New York accent thicker than the water in the Gowanus Canal.

I know Nordling is a New Jersey native, but wearing a tight Stanley Kowalski T-shirt and sprinkling your dialogue with dem and dose does not make you a neighborhood guy.

Balloon tune. Does anyone know how I can get a ringtone of "Richard Heene: The Psyience Detective"?

That is one cool theme song.

Contact staff writer David Hiltbrand at 215-854-4552 or dhiltbrand@phillynews.com. Read his recent work at http://go.philly.com/daveondemand.